Bello Mohammed Matawalle Maradun

Bello Muhammad Matawalle, popularly known as Bello Matawalle, is a Nigerian politician and teacher from Maradun in Zamfara State. The record lists him as male with qualifications including First School Leaving Certificate and Senior School Certificate Examination, and it contains differing birth-date references, including 1963-01-01 and 12 February 1969. He served as governor of Zamfara State from 2019 to 2023 and has served as Minister of State for Defence since 2023.

His political career included brief service in the Abacha-era state house of assembly, service as a state commissioner from 1999 to 2003 in the Ahmad Sani Yerima administration, and election in 2003 to the House of Representatives for Bakura/Maradun, a seat he held until 2015. During this period, he first served under the All Nigeria Peoples Party and later switched to the People's Democratic Party in 2011. After losing his House seat in 2015, he became the PDP's 2019 governorship nominee and assumed office after a Supreme Court ruling disqualified the original winner; in 2021, he defected from the PDP to the APC in Gusau alongside most Zamfara elected officials.

Matawalle obtained his First School Leaving Certificate from Maradun Township Primary School in 1979, worked as a teacher at Government Girls College, Moriki and Kwatarkoshi, and later joined the Federal Ministry of Water Resources. In 1998, after leaving the ministry, he joined the defunct United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP), won a house of assembly seat, and entered politics during the transition period in which political parties were dissolved after the death of Sani Abacha on 8 June 1998 and elections were announced for 1999.